In a sane world, the summer of 2015 would have largely been considered the Summer of Pluto– the last planet in our solar system explored by humankind. Pluto, with its large moon Charon and four smaller moons (Nix, Hydra, Styx, Kerberos), is now granting planetary enthusiasts ideal insight with terrain and atmospheric data and awesome, new images to behold- probably the last of all the close-up imagery we will see in our lifetimes as its highly elliptical orbit around the sun (our Star) takes it deeper into space.
Sadly, we do not live in a sane generation but rather during a time of global tumult, lawlessness, and progressive governmental corruption and bureaucratic tyranny, meaning that even exploration of the Solar System has taken an uncomfortable backseat to our more pressing global concerns.
Nonetheless, in this article we will take a brief break from the world’s evils and its approaching Apocalypse to consider Pluto’s creation in the likeness of the Suffering Servant Messiah. As written in Genesis and throughout the Scriptures, signs in the heavens were created to reassure us that we have a Creator who is still in control.
At its closest distance to Earth, Pluto is between two and three billion miles away, and at its longest distance (on opposite the side of Sun), the smallest of our planets is about 4.67 billion miles away. (NB: The latter number may sound familiar to readers because God began creating our solar system over 4.6 billion years ago.)
Thus, NASA’s New Horizon probe, that blasted into space at over 36,000 mph in January of 2009, took six years to disclose Pluto’s many mysteries. Other than earlier blurred imagery taken near Jupiter, planetary enthusiasts lastly had to patiently endure as the New Horizon probe went into hibernation mode during its quest to explore discoverer Clyde Tombaugh’s Third Zone and its enigmatic planet. Until now, everyone could only speculate what mysteries Pluto might hold, and few astronomers expected to find what many are now calling a “living plant” because of its geological activity and blue sky atmosphere. Even fewer expected red ice seas on its surface and even more mysteries to emerge.
When the space exploration probe was finally awakened from its long slumber, it also revealed to the world that Pluto is slightly larger than astronomers had previously concluded, although its diameter of 1,473 miles (2,370 km) took only three minutes for the speeding probe to cross.
After an initial scare of silence for NASA, via the probe reverting to its back-up computer system, New Horizon captured the planet’s rocky, scarred terrain and sensed its nitrogen atmosphere before jettisoning farther into the Third Zone’s Kuiper belt.
With its successful mission, we now know of a visually striking, heart-shaped plain on one hemisphere of Pluto and about a dark patch at its southern pole (which some are calling “Cthulhu”- a mythical hybrid of dragon and octopus). Finally, it is now speculated that it snows on the little planet when its highly elliptical orbit brings it into long, colder seasons.
But what do things associated with Planet Pluto, some 40 times farther away from the sun than Earth, have to do with signs in the heavens and Judeo-Christian theology, for cosmology relevant to things right here at home? And why should we care about a heavenly body that voting scientists at the IAU relegated to dwarf planet status? (Albeit, their doing so has caused much protest and is in disagreement with NASA’s chief administrator, Charles Bolden.) Should Bible-believers take much interest in a distant rock that even most scientists have rejected from planetary status?
I posture yes; we can learn much by that which is rejected and despised in the world, even as Christ was rejected by religious elites and Roman rulers when He came down from Heaven (see Isa. 53). Although Pluto was the last planet in our solar system to be discovered, and it is the least of the nine in size, so, too, was Christ born in what was considered “the least” among the ruling cities of Judah, in Bethlehem (cf. Mic. 5:2; Matt. 2:6)- born to be God’s heavenly Shepherd (see Rev. 2:27). Indeed, Christ compared the “Kingdom of Heaven” with “the least” of all seeds in first century Judea (Mat. 13:32). He explained that he or she who is “least among us” (i.e., as marginalized servants) shall be great (Luke 9:48). Further, Messiah explained that “the last shall be first and the first shall be last” (Matt. 19:30; 20:16; Mark 10:31; Luke 13:30), and He revealed Himself as the “First and the Last” (cf. Rev. 1:5, 11, 17; 2:8, 19; 22:13).
Moreover, the sun- symbolic of God in Scripture- is the first and central heavenly body in our solar system, which God utilized to formed the system, but it is the last from the outward bounds of interstellar space; it is the greatest by all accounts in size and brightness, but all other planets and their moons orbit closer to anything coming into our system. Counting the nine planets, Sun is the 10th at the center. Likewise, Pluto- the least among these- is both the first and the last of the planetary spheres orbiting the sun- depending upon which of the two spheres we start at.
It is a brilliant planet with a wife and four other moons orbiting it, and it was created as another expression of Christ in the heavens. Whereas the sun expresses God’s warmth, enlightenment, and radiant glory, Pluto expresses His willingness to become the least for us, suffering rejection at the cross via His mortal manifestation in Christ. Hence, the least at one end of the solar system becomes as the greatest, the sun, at the center/linear end of it.
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“…And the stone [rejected “Cornerstone”] that struck the image became [grew into] a great mountain [became great] and filled the whole earth…Inasmuch as you saw that the stone [Little Rock, Messiah] was cut out of the mountain [Great Rock, God] without hand [human help], and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold [empires hindering Christ and His Kingdom]- the great God has made known unto the king what will come to pass after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation is sure.” (Dan. 2:35, 45) NKJV; intrpl. mine
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Thus, when we take a closer look at the other Divinely-orchestrated clues left for us by Pluto, and the mission to reach it, certain messianic truths become obvious and evidential to Bible enthusiasts.
For example, Bible-believers have likewise been part of a long journey for a new day with our rejected King and Lord, awaiting a new horizon as the Sun of Righteousness rises in our hearts (see Mal. 4). Like the probe, we have slumbered in times past in ignorance of the heavens as we await the completion of our journey that was 40 times farther away: a generation of Jubilee Years since Christ ascended into the heavens (i.e., 2000 years).
The old system that was to bring us enlightenment (the things of the Law) could not complete the mission without the New Covenant awakening us to the visions of our rejected King. He is truly the Chosen One who is greater than the intellectuals of the world have thought Him to be, and He will appear in our 3rd zone, which is on the 3rd millennial day from the cross. It took six years for NASA to reveal Pluto to the world, but we await the end of six millennial days from Adam; when six years of Revelation’s tribulations have passed, Christ will be revealed in the 7th year of the Apocalypse. Christ also has one citizenry Bride (like Charon) and four days that witness to His first arrival- Christ being the center of all the Law, Prophets, Writings, and the genealogy from Adam.
As for Pluto’s diameter of 1,473 miles, this points to the Aleph Key (or Key of Knowledge) where 1 becomes 1,000, so 4 points to Christ’s first coming at 4 great days (4,000 yrs.); 7 witnesses to His return on the 7th millennial day (Great Sabbath, the Day of YHVH); and this will be on the 3rd day form the cross (see Hos. 6). Or, if we wish to consider the signs of the Body of Christ formed in kilometers, 2,370 confesses that 2 millennial days will pass (2,000 yrs.) from the cross, which will usher in the 3rd day, which is 7th in the millennial weak, when the 70 members of the heavenly Sanhedrin will reign under Messiah.
In Revelation, we find that the Body of Christ– the elect- are summed up by 144,000 numbered Israelite bodies and an innumerable mass from all nations- all who worship the Sun of Righteousness and are cleansed by His blood (see Rev. 7:4-10). This body of Bible-believers is a citizenry that is also known as the New Jerusalem, soon to be manifest on Earth, which is spiritually measured 144 furlongs in length, in breadth, and in height (see Rev. 21:16). This is what the planetary bodies witness to when we add those who are falling away from the Light of the World and those who are reconciled back to the Light, as well as our number with the Light as our beginning. This 144 is 144,000 with the Key of Knowledge (1 becomes 1,000), in the company of innumerable heavenly bodies who orbit the Light at the center of our heavenly system.
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16) NKJV
Nevertheless, perhaps the original Pluto myths more readily confesses a shadowy or distorted expectancy of Christ rather than Satan. What did earlier Christians think about the Pluto myths and its association with the sun that they perceived from Scriptures to symbolize the Sun of Righteousness? Did some 1st or 2nd century Christians associate the pagan myths of Pluto with greater truths that they possessed of Christ?
What is clear is the fact that early churches were very familiar with the distorted parallels, such as the 1st century Church of Smyrna (one of seven mentioned in Revelation) being warned that Satan would cast some of them in prison, but they should be faithful unto death; hence they would not be hurt of the “second death.”
PDI
In Grecian mythology, the sun, or Helios, had two personifications- the hidden nighttime sun of the pit or underworld (Pluton Helios) and the daytime sun (Helios Apollon). Of course, we who know the Scriptures discern that this is backwards, and that it is Apollo or Apollyon (the Destroyer) who will ascend out of the bottomless pit for the Apocalypse (Rev. 9:11). Thus, we should also perceive that Pluto is the opposite, who came out of the night to shine as the sun in the daytime. And we know that there is no nighttime sun, but only one sun that always shines. Thus, it seems that God was showing the Apollo myth to be a usurpation of symbolic Pluto, or the Pluton Helios.
The Latin name Pluto was derived from Grecian Plouton, and from Romans we know him as the Wealthy/Rich Father, the Dis Pater. Thus, “Plutonius” was sometimes attached to other Greco-Roman deities, much as the word bar in many Hebew names implies “the son of,” such as in “Simon bar Jonah.” Moreover, Plutonius indicates that everything was created from the unseen realm, which is what the word Hades literally means, and is thus brought to light. When Christ said, “I have the keys of Hades and Death,” He revealed that He brings the dead to life and reveals and unseen things, releasing those who abide in spiritual darkness (cf. 1 Pet. 3:19; 4:6).
Before Hades became a place, it was the name of their unseen god. In Hebrew this is discernable in God (who is Spirit) and Heaven being interchangeable in texts, such as the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Heaven, or in something like ‘Heaven looks down for you.’ Moreover, Pluto, who was originally the mythical god of the harvest, began receiving souls in the afterlife with Roman interpretations of the unseen realm (Hades).
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